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Saturday, 27 February 2016

we would like to thank everyone who expressed an interest in joining us;
the decision was very difficult as there were so many fabulous crafters to choose from.

They were all so good that we would like to invite everyone who applied to join us for
a Guest Designer spot! So if that was you, please contact us and we'll
sort out a challenge for you to join us as a Guest Designer.

Hi – my name is Sarah and I am a CAS cardmaker from Leeds in the UK. I have been cardmaking and crafting for years and spend many happy hours playing with stamps, inks and dies and many more browsing all the fab blogs online. I love entering challenges and am delighted to be joining the DT at Less Is More! In addition to my crafting habit I have two gorgeous, football mad boys who are growing up fast and I work as well. With all of that going on, housework is the main casualty

I am a UK expat living in sunny Portugal. I have been married for 32 years and been blessed with 2 children and 2 grandchildren. I love all things inky, stamping, dies and colouring. Although I am starting a new blog, my previous design teams include Colour Create Challenge, Pixie Cottage, Whimsy stamps, Creative Card Crew, One Stop Crafts, and Frosted designs.

I live in Northern California, south of San Francisco. Nearly every day you can find me on the tennis court, cycling or playing soccer! When I'm not outside playing, I'm in the studio either sewing dresses and blankets for children in the community or trying to be an artist :) I'm married to a wonderful man who supports ALL of my many changing activities! We have one son who just graduated from college.

We know that you will give them a warm welcome!

The challenge this week is a

Recipe

and for that concoction we would like you to include

SOME WIRE

We realise that this is quite a tricky one, so if there's no way you can produce a card with
actual wire on it, an image or die-cut depicting wire will also qualify!

I twisted some silver wire and made it into a scribble Xmas tree shape, threaded on some beads and hot glued it to some card. The mats were hand pricked. Sentiment is from Spellbinders decorative curved star set.Susanwill be adding her first DT card next week

I blended Peacock Feathers Distress Ink through a Checkerboard stencil by MFT onto the card base. The present is an MFT pierced die cut square cut from 'sherbert pips' cardstock by Kanban. I looped some wire around to create a bow and secured with some 3D foam which I used to pop up the present. The sentiment is by Paper Smooches.

The wire on this card was just snipped from the roll and gently pulled open a little, then secured on the Design Objectives embossed panel with a glue dot. The floral die cut is from Simon Says Stamp, with an additional leaf spray (that I am still trying to identify) and a sentiment from Clearly Besotted,

As there are soon to be more of us each week, from next time we will not be adding details of how our individual cards have been made, these details will be available on our personal blogs!
***

Friday, 26 February 2016

It seems that a few people were so keen to ensure that the card was one layer, that the fact that the focus was to include a stem was sadly missed!However, having said that, there were some simply beautiful submissions and we're sure you'll agree that our showcase this week is stunning!

This is a real work of trompe l'oeil, it looks for all the world that the elements are separate layers... it really tricks the eye... fabulous work! Take a peek at Sharon's blog to see how she achieved this.

When making some Thank you cards for a charity, I embossed the front of one card on the wrong side so cut it off to re-use, so here it is as the front panel of this card. The embossing folder is from Hobby Solutions. The butterfly is cut from some smooshed card with a die from All Occasions. The sentiment is from Penny Black.

This one uses texture paste through a leaf stencil from STAMPlorations

then sprinkled with Glamour Dust. The sentiment is from Clearly Besotted

with the 'Happy' heat embossed onto vellum and the matching die used for

'Anniversary' The sequins are by Lucy Abrams.

AnneMy starting point for texture here was the rather hairy twine that the bird is perched on! I added some embossing to the background and also to the bird's wing. SU bird punch, Mama Elephant sentiment.

We have been delighted to see that many of you have been visiting fellow contributors blogs to leave a friendly comment, and as ever we have been delighted to receive visits from you at our personal blogs too.

Very many thanks to everyone who has expressed an interest in joining our Design Team, we will be deliberating and letting you know our choices very soon!

Saturday, 13 February 2016

Firstly we must say a huge THANK YOU for all the wonderful comments we received on our Birthday challenge last week, ( prizes will be announced shortly)!

It's such a good feeling to know that our efforts are appreciated by so many of you!

At this point I (Chrissie) must express a HUGE debt of gratitude to the girls on the DT. I don't think that there is another challenge in Blogland where for the most part, ALL the DT have commented on ALL the submissions to their challenges and I know that their creativeness is appreciated by all who check out the blog each week.

This undertaking has not possible without hard work and dedication and it's for this reason that we have decided to extend the number of members on the Design Team so that the load (particularly commenting) can be eased and the commitment spread a little.

So....here's a

DT CALL!

We are therefore looking to add two new members to the DT.

If you wish to be considered for such a position, please add (DT) after your name on your submission this week.

Those wishing to apply should

be comfortable with the CAS genre

have a personal blog

produce a sample card for each week's challenge

comment on a large proportion of the submissions to every challenge

add additional cards for some of the challenges to their personal blogs

Do remember to leave lots of that all important white space and as with a couple of the DT examples here, don't be afraid to go off the edge of the card sometimes!

We have always encouraged participants to comment of fellow participants entries and we are delighted that so many LIMettes already do this, but if you haven't yet considered this we would urge you to do so...many friendships have begun this way!

Friday, 12 February 2016

We'd like to start by saying thank you for all the wonderful comments we've received from you during our 5th Birthday celebrations. We really do appreciate your continued support and are so happy that we manage to inspire you to participate week after week, so a BIG THANK YOU to all of you.

So, back to business and Friday morning means it's time for the

ShowCASe

of our

DOWN UNDER

challenge and what a fabulous selection we had and some great interpretations of the theme.

Saturday, 6 February 2016

We have reached quite a milestone! It's 5 years since Less is More began and we are delighted to say that we are still going strong... thanks to all the wonderful support from crafty bloggers from all around the world!

For our special Birthday Challenge we are delighted to be joined by some of our wonderful sponsors and there are lots of prizes to be had.

"I'm thrilled to be back supporting my favourite challenge's 5th Birthday. For my card I've just used the simplicity of die cuts. The two heart frames are by Concord and 9th and layer over each other with foam tape. I added a gold foiled "love" from a Wplus9 die and finished with some tiny matching gold gems."

Tara is sponsoring the February challenge but is also offering an additional prize for the birthday challenge of the Mama Elephant: New Family set

AnitaApart from the embossed background, everything here is by Clearly Besotted. I stamped the flower (Love Quotes II), the 'you' and 'thank' (Thank You set) in Versamark and heat embossed in silver and cut these out with their coordinating dies, and the 'thank' onto a strip of white cardstock. The leaves were stamped and heat embossed in white and also cut with the coordinating dies, and the smaller leaves (Leafy Accents) were die cut from white vellum. For the main panel I used some white embossing paste through a stencil, Dot Fade by Tim Holtz. I then layered these up, adhered to the panel and then popped it up on 3D foam.

The whole card is made from linen textured card. The flowery heart is a Memory Box Serafina die, attached to a XCut heart that was run through a Sheena Douglass embossing folder. I embossed the Clarity sentiment and added a small XCut heart to it.Chrissie

Here is a die-cut shaker card, using MFT's champagne glass and letters from Memory Box Alphabet Soup, with the @ from Cuttlebug.

Being on the Design Team there I've been given the nod to treat you to a card

using one of the brand new sets which hasn't even been revealed yet!

So let me introduce 'I Love Tea' and being a birthday month my

inspiration came from the very English tradition of Afternoon Tea,

with delicate china cups edged with gold ... I think my Grandma used

to have some very similar to this too! The image and sentiment plus

2 edges of my card base are heat embossed in Gold Sparkle EP and to

finish a few gems and pearls from my stash!

As always we would urge you to visit the DT at their personal blogs where there is always additional inspiration for your delectation! It would be great if you could visit our Guest designers too!
Have fun!